Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that visiting US officials had agreed to keep legal border crossings open during a trip aimed at addressing surging migration.
Lopez Obrador met for more than two hours with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top US officials including Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday.
“There’s more and more movement on the border, on the bridges, and that’s why we must be careful so that the crossings are not closed. That agreement was reached,” Lopez Obrador told reporters.
“The crossings for the railway and border bridges are already being opened to normalize the situation,” he added, highlighting the strong trade ties between the two countries.
He said the two sides had agreed to hold regular meetings to address increasing migration, which has become a major headache for US President Joe Biden as he enters an election year.
Earlier this month, overwhelmed US authorities closed two rail bridge crossings on the Mexico-Texas border for several days to try to limit illegal entries on freight trains.
Legal crossings have also been suspended at several vehicle and pedestrian entry points in the states of Texas, Arizona and California to free up resources to address undocumented arrivals.
US border police have in recent weeks reported approximately 10,000 crossings by migrants every day, many of them fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.
There has also been an uptick in migrants traveling through Mexico from Haiti and Venezuela.
Blinken’s unusual Christmas week visit came as the rival Republican Party presses Biden for a migration crackdown in return for agreeing in Congress to support for Ukraine.Mexico says US agrees to keep border crossings open
